> My guess: pulling tens of terawatts of energy out of the atmosphere will effect the climate.

Nobody is pulling anything *out* of anything. All they are doing is *moving* it.

As the Sun heats the surface, the surface heats the air, the air moves to carry the heat to places that are cooler.
As the wind blows it heats the environment due to conduction, radiation, and friction. The energy of the Sun has been moved from warmer to cooler and finally, ultimately, it is radiated back into space.

As the turbine is powered by the wind and generates electricity, the air is cooled, the electricity is transported elsewhere and the energy is ultimately dissipated as heat. Same net result, just a different distribution of the Sun's energy across the surface of the planet. Will it make a difference in the climate? Only locally as places downwind of the wind-farms will be cooler and less windy than otherwise and the places that consume the energy will be warmer than otherwise.

As soon as one tech or another can produce energy for less $$$ than a previous tech, there will be changes.

Cost here is evaluated in the market. It includes things like the cost of bribing politicians, Environmental imPAct surveys, farmers' leases, manufacture, transportation, installation, maintenance, taxes, and on and on. The overall cost of doing business. The only reason that wind(and solar) plants are cropping up is because they are starting to be cost-competitive with existing energy sources.

My collection of music spans stuff written across more than two centuries. Yes, I have a focus on what was coming out when I was young, but that does not preclude me from enjoying stuff that was available 100 years before I was born, nor from enjoying tunes produced after my first grandchild was born.

What does stop me from enjoying(and here I repeat and emphasize) *most* of what is coming out or is otherwise popular today is that *most* of it sucks.

It might be a bit over enthusiastic on trying to be helpful, but do note that I asked for the distance. It understood my question, and gave me the correct answer, first. I never even scrolled down.

The reason for my question: Degree Confluence Project

How about an esoteric question?

what is the distance between 89N 1W and 89N 2W ?

That people buy games and DVDs these days instead of music because most of the music available now simply sucks.

For some time now(years?), most of the music-money I've spent has been back filling. I've been picking up (cheap) CDs of old albums that I never got around to purchasing in the past.

Finally got a copy of "The Bends" last week. ;-)

Just make this a required feature: OP

How did this 'article' ever get past the filters?

Of course the answer is 'if you have to ask, then you can't afford it'.

While the P gave a very detailed response, the ultimate answer is: you should not be asking this question.

Combination hammer, axe, prybar. Used to be my grandfather's. Stamped "Made in Texas 1901".
There are more stampings, but I can't make them out.

I also have his old rail pike, used to manually bend rail track sections into place(remember when Arnold got staked to the deck in T2?), but I have no idea how old it is.

Old computer hardware?

AMD 386dx40 mobo with only ISA slots, plenty of peripherals including an ethernet card with cat-5 and coax connections, and a true VGA-only card. Runs Slackware in 16MB SDRAM and 100MB disk drive. Makes a great X server.

DEC Alpha 233MHz Noname mobo that still works like a charm. Runs old Red Hat.

I'm sure my dad still has a trx80 somewhere...ooh I forgot in the garage he has an old fashioned Teletype with paper tape punch/reader on the side. An authentic 110 baud machine.

While I agree with most of and the gist of your post, I must take exception to this:

If you think that CPU cycles and memory sizes aren't so important these days, just ask M$ about Vista. If there is any one thing that has made Vista a bust, it is M$ thinking that execution speed and efficiency don't matter much anymore.

Katrina was simultaneously the fastest hitting and most severe localized ecological disaster this country has ever experienced. There were real live refugees. Are there any more today?

If there are, it's because they want to be or were already effectively socioeconomic refugees when Katrina hit in which case nothing has changed except their location.

Climate change and rising water will not hit anywhere near as fast. The wiser ones will sell their real estate and move out and buy something else while fools and/or speculators buy it cheap and move in. Later I'm sure there will be some sort of federal buy-out program(if there still is a federal gov by then) that will make the speculators smile. Even the fools will have resources to buy a new house inland. Renters can continue to do just that, just somewhere else.

What if...just suppose that the climate change that you fear for its cost is natural and not man-caused?

Should we then muck with the environment in an effort to stop it, because of the cost if we don't?

As far as economic disruption goes, that's going to be no big deal in a free country. People will move out, move uphill/inland and their assets(other than real estate) and work will follow. More will be employed building new harbors, new levees, etc. The economy can readily adapt and does so way faster than any ecosystem can change.

It's about time some folks with spines showed up.

The FA of the US Constituition regulates the government, specifically the Congress but after interpretation the whole federal gov. The gov can't stop you from talking, especially about the gov itself. It has nothing to say about private parties, who can say what, where, when, and what the consequences are if for instance, you badmouth your boss while off work and he finds out about it.

Here is a decent summary.

Too old. You have triggered some old and long unused neurons. I have not thought of length, area, volume... "measures" of sets in more than 25 years.

I still like the post you originally replied to; wish I had some mod points. That was funny.